Reminds me of Windows Search.
It's been botched since they added ads to the Start Menu.
Pretty soon VSCode will show you intellisense ads in the list of code completions.
Reminds me of Windows Search.
It's been botched since they added ads to the Start Menu.
Pretty soon VSCode will show you intellisense ads in the list of code completions.
Windows Search requires a DNS lookup, and HTTP request to start your search, as a direct result if either one of those is slow the whole UI lags and hangs. It hasn't ever been fixed in Windows 11.
Also, there is a RegX way of disabling "bing" for-real in the search but they released an update that caused doing so to break search entirely if that was set (totally a coincidence I'm sure).
> Windows Search requires a DNS lookup
WHY? Why? Why. I’m seriously asking. Who thought that was a good idea? Who?! FIRE THEM.
NO USER ever in the history of Windows users ever said: “I want to search the contents of my computer, but windows search is too fast; can you please make windows search extremely slow, make it omit things that I know exist, and also make it search the internet? Also, I want you to index my laptop while it is sleeping in my bag, making my bag very hot, and using up all my battery trying to cool down so that I have no battery left when I open up the laptop.”
No one has ever asked for that, but we have it, we’ve had it for a long damn time.
The best thing about windows 11 is that if you hit the windows key, and type 'restart', it searches for 'restart' on Bing.
Please give me the name, rank, and serial number of the PM who thought this was a good idea. I will use all my meager fortune to make sure that nobody will want to hire them for PM work ever again.
Try and search for 'recycle bin' and you get zero local results in Windows 11. Unless you've gone and manually added the desktop icon into you Start menu items.
30 years ago, Win95 introduced the Recycle Bin. Maybe, just maybe, you should have made it discoverable via the Start menu by now?
I'd say that's the second best, after "there's probably a 5-10% chance the start menu search doesn't actually pop up correctly in the first place"
Easiest I've found is Windows+X, then 'u' for 'Shut Down or Restart' then 'r' for retart. Win+X, u, r.
BECAUSE ads that's why. They could have had the sense and respect for their users to make it async.
This started before suggestions in the start menu.
Odd capitalization detected: might indicate that commenter is older with opinions stronger and more frequent than normal.
The "odd capitalization" was humor related to the parent comment's "odd capitalization".
I have resorted to installing my laptop with Ireland / English & later switching the region to US / English. That way it's considered part of the European Economic Area.
Which allows me to disable web search in start, disable widgets, etc.
> Windows Search requires a DNS lookup, and HTTP request to start your search, as a direct result if either one of those is slow the whole UI lags and hangs. It hasn't ever been fixed in Windows 11.
The fix is called Linux.
I use this script here and it will remove the stupid bing search feature.
https://github.com/musman96/win11debloat
I was surprised when I saw that in Windows 11 Safe Mode, the Start Menu appeared to have two forms: the first of which would not appear to show typing, but then it would be replaced with the other layout after a lag with the query in the input box and the results populated.
I'm convinced that the win10 Start Menu was the single worst thing microsoft inflicted upon us in that OS. I imagine that particular discussion went like this:
Exec1:"We have a semi decent os with a refreshingly updated UI that should stay relevant for a decade. How can we make it better?"
Exec2: "why not replace the perfectly good start menu we have with an ugly, oddly proportioned rectangle with animated ads for our products."
Exec3: "Sounds great! Just make sure it has a quarter of the information density of the old one and takes up twice the screen space."
I haven't used Win11 enough to discover how they have managed to further degrade the experience, but at least it looks nicer.
It took me a few hours to make the start menu looks like this: https://i.ibb.co/R4pgrwBx/start-menu.png
Now it's clean, doesn't show any web results when I start typing there: https://i.ibb.co/KpNptJTq/start-menu2.png
It also starts instantly every time (that requires removing Edge and web results from there). I use it as an app launcher only. The only missing touch is a fuzzy search but I can live without it.
I've spent too much time on it. There are tools that do it for you if you trust them (like Windhawk).
>>I haven't used Win11 enough to discover how they have managed to further degrade the experience, but at least it looks nicer.
It's an anti-pattern over anti-pattern over anti-pattern. There is a trap waiting for you at every corner. At this point it's hard to imagine them not losing the whole consumer PC market to Apple and maybe some gaming friendly Linux distros. It will take a decade or so but once the snowball starts it will not turn back. I don't think it's only about power users only. They forced S0 sleep but didn't are about making sure it doesn't crash the system because of some misbehaving driver or failed Windows update. Normal users don't like seeing everything gone and the computer restarting when they open the lid. That doesn't happen on Macs. It won't happen on Valve sponsored Linux distro either.
Was the original menu so bad? Your one has zero discoverability, which is the main feature of the old menu, and something which was degraded, but not completely killed off on the newer versions.
I don't need discoverability. I know what I have on my computer. I need it to be reliable, fast and not distract me with junk. Maybe most people need discoverability, the problem is that with the new design all they will discover is ads for Microsoft's products :)
>>Was the original menu so bad?
The original has ads, flashy banners and opens with lag half the time. Yes, it's that bad.
When Windows Phone was a thing, those live tiles were amazing. Those giant squares in the Win10 start menu were live tiles.
Such a shame that so few applications on Win10 made use of them.
Never saw the point of them. I prefer static content, something which most web designers can't wrap their heads around.
Easy navigation is something Mac sucks at for no good reason. I don't know why Windows is trying to degrade their advantage.
They never made sense for desktop interfaces with a keyboard and mouse. Information density is usually preferred, because we have big screens and precise, fast input.
I don’t know how you think live tiles worked but they showed you information from an application without launching the application. You just open the start menu and you’d see all the current info from those applications at a glance, whether they were running or not, no clicking required.
They took up 10x more space than they need to. And we had the information thing way, way before.
I can see the weather on my taskbar right now in KDE, no app launch required. Except it's not a giant 1 inch by 1 inch square plastered on my start menu. It's a little text showing me a cloud and temperature.
Also, live tiles just did not work a lot of the time. Most of the time, when you looked at them, it would just show the icon surrounded by a sea of color, like a little island. I'm assuming because the daemon is either not running or has ridiculously slow start up time, whereas the start menu might only be open for fractions of a second.
Do you remember the windows 8 full screen start menu?
I used it and it was alright. They made it optionally not full screen in Windows 8.1 quickly too.
i miss the wondows 8 inking tools. loved that for drawing system diagrams and flow charts:'(
It boggles my mind how broken this has become.
Windows Vista/7, search was instant and correct (modulo hard drive speed and RAM). Then Windows 10 came along, I click a local result, half the time it takes forever to open Explorer, or nothing happens, or there's no results once it does open.
By the way, things still work correctly and instantly with OpenShell, so something still works underneath whatever shit veneer has coated the shell
Let me fix the title: Microsoft, please get your shit together
I tried to help a relative set up a new Windows PC recently and had to give up. Everything was confusing and/or broken, and for the first time I am ready to just send them to Apple while they can still return it. A literal brand new PC with nothing installed, and after logging in, clicking Explorer in the task bar doesn't work and I have to reboot and try again? I'm not even angry, just disappointed.
Did you know there's no more Office, they literally call it Microsoft Copilot 365 now? Like, I've been through shades of this before (".NET", anyone?) but it's a thoroughly unhinged clusterfuck on an entirely different level now.
Oh, I'd say AI is rotting our brains, all right...
> It's been botched since they added ads to the Start Menu.
Sounds like botched since they botched it